William Hone

1780-1842

1969

Australian Newspapers

When I saw the title of this post in the Drafts section I thought “oh not more whinging about newspapers, put a sock in it” because I’d quite forgotten what it was actually about. Which is this:

The National Library of Australia’s online archive of Australian newspapers from 1803 to 1954.

Novels in Three Lines

Fascinating little news items from 1906 by Félix Fénéon, now available on Twitter.

Anyone else out there been twatting? Mine is mostly a work status thing, so not particularly interesting.

Modern Times

As part of their upcoming exhibition Modern Times – the untold story of Modernism in Australia, the Powerhouse Museum have created a public Flickr group and invited the public to post their own photos and images.

Which is pretty untold.

The apology

This is a great day.

William Lorando Jones

In Sefton, on the way to my parents’ place, I drive down Helen Street, from which three Avenues proceed: Chifley, Lorando and Roosevelt. I’m a bit of a fan of suburban street name themes. Helen Street is part of a small Classical precinct, along with Priam, Hector and Virgil; the last is a bit of an odd man out, not being a character in the Iliad, and when I was a kid I though it was named after the pilot of Thunderbird 2.

Chifley and Roosevelt Avenues make sense, as two political heroes of the postwar years when the market gardens and orchards of the west were being turned into suburbs, but I’d always been puzzled by Lorando. A Google search last weekend turned up the following story from the 1871, about a trial of one William Lorando Jones for blasphemy – he had given an address at Parramatta Domain which roundly criticised the Bible, and the Old Testament in particular, after the fashion of Thomas Paine, as being “a mass of immoralities and a lie.”

Whether or not the street at the back of Sefton High School commemorates a 19th-century deist, I’m glad that it led me to this case – I never knew there was a Domain at Parramatta where firebrands gave speeches, and Mr Buchanan’s case seems to me to be a fine defense of the principles of freedom of speech, even though it failed. William Lorando Jones was found guilty and sentenced to two years in Darlinghurst Gaol and a fine of 100 pounds.

The Queen v William Lorando Jones

Mr. Buchanan, before addressing the jury, submitted that there was no case to go to them. The defendant was charged with blasphemy; this, according to the highest authorities, was an offence consisting in an attack upon the established religion of the country. In England there was an established religion, which thus became part of the law of the land, and to speak against that religion was to speak against the law itself; at the same time, however, any person who choose to do so might criticise, or even libel, the religious belief of any other sect in England beside the Church of England, and might call into question the doctrines of the Roman Catholic, Wesleyan, Congregational, or other dissenting sect, with the utmost impunity. Here in Australia the case was different, for we have no established religion; therefore, as a logical sequence, as the religion established by law in England is not law in this country, to speak against that religion here could not be an infringement of the law.

His Honor considered that any one who, in a wholesale way, says that the Bible is not true, and denies the divinity of our Saviour, is amenable for blasphemy.

Mr. Buchanan still contended that any attacks, save upon an established religion, were not amenable to law.

His Honor admitted that Christianity was not established in this colony by Act of Parliament, but did not hesitate to say that it came to us as part and parcel of the common law of England necessarily incorporated in the Constitution of the colony as an offspring of the British nation.

At the request of Mr. Buchanan, however, his Honor reserved the point.

Mr. Buchanan, in a forcible and eloquent speech extending over two hours, upheld the right of the defendant as a free subject in a free country to express his opinions on matters of religious belief, either public or private, and contended that a jury who would convict a man as guilty of blasphemy when he had merely given utterance to the convictions of his soul for the benefit (as, he however, wrongly thought) of his fellow-creatures, were individually and collectively worthy of being held up to the utter scorn and contempt of the entire civilised globe. To punish such a man for expressing his honest belief would be to roll us back to those dark ages, when, as in the case of Galileo, pains and penalties were held over every man who dared to think for himself and publicly express his opinions.

At the conclusion of Mr. Buchanan’s speech, during the delivery of which the Court was crowded to excess by a most attentive audience, whilst the seats on the Bench were occupied by many of the leading magistrates, there were audible expressions of approval, which, however, were promptly suppressed by the police.

Anzacs at the Easter Rising

“The Anzacs had been above on the roof of the College since an early hour. Owing to the strict order received from the Irish Command not to fire until attacked, many chances of ‘potting’ Rebels had been missed. But later in the morning this order had been withdrawn. Already before daylight a despatch-rider of the enemy had been brought down by the fire of the Anzacs. It was wonderful shooting. He was one of three who were riding past on bicycles. Four shots were fired. Three found their mark in the head of the unfortunate victim. Another of the riders was wounded and escaped on foot. The third abandoned his bicycle and also escaped. This shooting was done by the uncertain light of the electric lamps, and at a high angle downwards from a lofty building. The body was brought in.”

This is from a contemporary article published in Blackwoods Magazine by John Joly who was Professor of Geology at Trinity College in Dublin during the Easter Rising of 1916. I found this in a historical anthology about Dublin I’m reading before my trip: mention of Anzac snipers gave me a start. There’s nothing like the feeling of two naïve myths knocking together (the plucky Digger as victim, rather than agent, of Empire; the idea that Australians with Irish ancestry in 1916 would automatically be sympathetic to the Fenians) to wake you up in the morning.

A quick Google turned up Jeff Kildea’s fascinating paper in the Journal of the Australian War Memorial, “Called to arms: Australian soldiers in the Easter Rising 1916″

Bloomsbury

Going to the UK in October will be my first overseas trip. People keep thinking they’ve misheard me when I tell them this – but, believe me, if you think it’s strange to imagine a 37 year old Australian who hasn’t been o/s, it’s even stranger to be one. Planning it all has made me feel a lot of strong and odd emotions, which I was hoping by now would be in some kind of shape resembling a blog post; but, no, not yet.

Pointillist summary: class, expectations, rites of passage, insularity, embarrassment, exile, Australian identity, class again, etc, etc.

So here’s a link instead; Dan Hill, one of my favourite bloggers, takes a dérive around his quondam neighbourhood (he’s just moved to Sydney). Coincidentally, this is where I will be staying for my four nights in London.

City of Sound: A birth, in 13 places: 12. Bloomsbury, Central London

Yes, only four nights. I know. Don’t start.

François Villon: a documented survey

D B Wyndham-Lewis

I have decided to stop kidding myself about going into Berkelouw’s on Oxford Street and “just having a look around before the movie.” What I will say from now on is that I am going to buy a very good secondhand book, because, Hume be damned, this is what has always happened in the past.

D B Wyndham-Lewis was the happy Wyndham-Lewis; not Percy Wyndham Lewis, the painter and novelist, but the light humourist and editor of the marvellous anthology of bad verse The Stuffed Owl. In this biography of the 15th-century French poet, he’s in a somewhat crankier mood, although nowhere near as stroppy as his near namesake – who gets a mention, I believe, in the book’s dedication, as “The Frothing Vorticist”.

The book is peppered with jibes at those of the author’s contemporaries who despised religion and the medieval; these give it a rather sulky tone at times. Wyndham-Lewis, like Chesterton and Belloc, was one of those belles-lettrestical defenders of the reputation of the Middle Ages and Catholicism against the contempt of the Modernist and the Whig. I don’t know if this movement has a name; I find it fascinating, and somewhat disturbing, mostly because Chesterton and Belloc could be hair-raisingly anti-semitic. Their apologists are always swift to point out that they were never anti-semitic in person – the “some of my best friends are Jews” defense, which is not in fact a defense at all. Wyndham-Lewis seems to be not altogether free from this prejudice, but in the Villon study he limits it to a completely gratuitous poke at Freud.

In his spare time from being a poet, Villon was a convicted thief and full-dress roisterer, and I found it impossible not to share Wyndham-Lewis’ enthusiasm for him, despite the fact that I can only pretend to read French. Because of this sad limitation, I can’t comment on the poetry, except to say that reading the Ballade des Dames du Temps Jadis in this volume and following along with Swinburne’s English translation is the closest I’ve come to appreciating the beauty of a poem in another language. This is like being locked outside a stately home while a civilised entertainment, full of beautiful women and the aroma of fine wines and delicious foods, is proceeding within; but it’s better than nothing.